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Back on Christmas day, Mark came over for some company, and a good day of gaming. We had kicked around the idea of a quick SFB duel, but didn’t actually get that far. Instead, we turned our first attention to Sun of York, which we’d last had on the table a couple of years ago.

We had a good time with the second and third scenarios, but they did both finish fairly quickly. Both of us had trouble with getting any kind of balance of troops and orders in our hands, so the first charge basically decided the game without any reserves available.

First up was The Battle of Blore Heath, and I was only able to field three units per battle, with no backup. Mark advanced into the middle, and my archers forced the entire section down to low cohesion, and I followed up, chasing after him, and charging into his weak position to take the center battle and win the battle. I had only a couple weak units on my right, and he had taken that battle, but the collapse of his center happened right afterwards.

Next was Ludford Bridge, which was a bit faster since we had properly refreshed on the rules. Sadly, the photo for that one didn’t come out, and I don’t remember as much about it. But I managed to force a decision on both flanks and took them to win that fight. Oh yes, I had a decided superiority in quality, as Mark drew 1 cohesion troops led by several with 2.

As I recall, the first time we played, things drew out a bit, presumably due to a combination of being able to feed new troops in and having trouble with orders to come to grips with each other. I seem to remember some melees going a few turns, which was decidedly not the case here.

It’s a fun system, but getting a more stable opening to turn into a proper set-piece battle seems to be a problem.

After that, we turned to Commands & Colors Medieval, and we played the Battle of Solachon with me as the Byzantines (sadly we ran out of time to play it again). As has been usual with Medieval, cavalry predominates, and it all had bows. The action started on my right flank, where there’s compact formation of good Byzantine cavalry. Luck was on my side for the entire battle, starting with a ranged attack that did two blocks.

That petered out after a bit, and the action largely moved to the other flank, though Mark tried getting at the medium infantry on a ridge line stretching across the center. The left also went well, with good dice continuing to pick up banners for little cost. The end shifted back to the right, where I captured a Sassanid camp, which gave me my last needed banner. 6-1

Overall, it was a fun, relaxed day, and we got a few things back to the table that have been on the ‘to play again’ list for a while.